"I bet that cop's layin' for us," I grunted.
"I bet he ain't," said Bill, and for once he was right. I reckon the Chinee thought the neighborhood was too tough for him. We never seen him again.
We took the opposite side from where we come in at, and maybe you think we had a nice time getting that squirming frail over the wall. But we finally done it and started for the old deserted warehouse with her. Once I started to untie her and explain we was her friends, but the instant I started taking off the gag, she sunk her teeth into my neck. So I got mad and disgusted and gagged her again.
I thought we wouldn't never get to the warehouse. Tied as she was, she managed to wriggle and squirm and bounce till I had as soon try to carry a boa- constrictor, and I wisht she was a man so I could sock her on the jaw. We kept to back alleys and it ain't no uncommon sight to see men carrying a bound and gagged girl through them twisty dens at night, in that part of the native quarters, so if anybody seen us, they didn't give no hint. Probably thought we was a couple of strong-arm gorillas stealing a girl for some big mandarin or something.
Well, we finally come to the warehouse, looming all silent and deserted on the rotting old wharf. We come up into the shadder of it and somebody went, "Shhhh!"
"Is that you, Ace?" I said, straining my eyes—because they wasn't any lamps or lights of any kind anywheres near and everything was black and eery, with the water sucking and lapping at the piles under our feet.
"Yeah," came the whisper, "right here in this doorway. Come on— this way—I got the door open."
We groped our way to the door and blundered in, and he shut the door and lit a candle. We was in a small room which must have been a kind of counting or checking room once when the warehouse was in use. Ace looked at the girl and didn't seem a bit surprised because she was tied up.
"That's her, all right," he says. "Good work. Well, boys, your part's did. You better scram. I'll meet you tomorrer and split the reward."
"We'll split it tonight," I growled. "I been kicked in the shins and scratched and bit till I got tooth-marks all over me, and if you think I'm goin' to leave here without my share of the dough, you're nuts."
"You bet," said Bill. "We delivers her to John Bain, personal."
Ace looked inclined to argy the matter, but changed his mind and said, "All right, he's in here—bring her in."
So I carried her through the door Ace opened, and we come into a big inner room, well lighted with candles and fixed up with tables and benches and things. It was Ace's secret hangout. There was Big Bess and a tall, lean feller with a pale poker-face and hard eyes. And I felt the girl stiffen in my arms and kind of turn cold.
"Well, Bain," says Ace jovially, "here she is!"
"Good enough," he said in a voice like a steel rasp. "You men can go now."
"We can like hell," I snapped. "Not till you pay us."
"How much did you promise them?" said Bain to Ace.
"A grand apiece," muttered Ace, glancing at us kind of uneasy, "but I'll tend to that."
"All right," snapped Bain, "don't bother me with the details. Take off her gag."
I done so, and untied her, watching her nervously so I could duck if she started swinging on me. But it looked like the sight of her brother wrought a change in her. She was white and trembling.
"Well, my dear," said John Bain, "we meet again."
"Oh, don't stall!" she flamed out. "What are you going to do to me?"
Me and Bill gawped at her and at each other, but nobody paid no attention to us.
"You know why I had you brought here," said Bain in a tone far from brotherly. "I want what you stole from me."
"And you stole it from old Yuen Kiang," she snapped. "He's dead—it belongs to me as much as it does to you!"
"You've hidden from me for a long time," he said, getting whiter than ever, "but it's the end of the trail Catherine, and you might as well come through. Where's that formula?"
"Where you'll never see it!" she said, very defiant.
"No?" he sneered. "Well, there are ways of making people talk—"
"Give her to me," urged Big Bess with a nasty glint in her eyes.
"I'll tell you nothing!" the girl raged, white to the lips. "You'll pay for persecuting an honest woman this way—"
John Bain laughed like a jackal barking. "Fine talk from you, you snake- in-the-grass! Honest? Why, the police of half a dozen countries are looking for you right now!"
John Bain jumped up and grabbed her by the wrist, but I throwed him away from her with such force he knocked over a table and fell across it.
"Hold everything!" I roared. "What kind of a game is this?"
John Bain pulled hisself up and his eyes was dangerous as a snake's.
"Get out of here and get quick!" he snarled. "Ace can settle with you for this job out of the ten thousand I'm paying him. Now get out, before you get hurt!"
"Ten thousand!" howled Bill. "Ace is gettin' ten thousand? And us only a measly grand apiece?"
"Belay everything!" I roared. "This is too blame complicated for me. Ace sends us to rescue Bain's sister from the Chinks, us to split a three-thousand- dollar reward—now it comes out that Ace gets ten thousand—and Bain talks about his sister robbin' him—"
"Oh, go to the devil!" snapped Bain. "Barlow, when I told you to get a couple of gorillas for this job, I didn't tell you to get lunatics."
"Don't you call us looneyticks," roared Bill wrathfully. "We're as good as you be. We're better'n you, by golly! I remember you now—you ain't no more a milyunaire than I am! You're a adventurer—that's what old Cap'n Hurley called you—you're a gambler and a smuggler and a crook in general. And I don't believe this gal is your sister, neither."
"Sister to that swine?" the girl yelped like a wasp had stung her. "He's persecuting me, trying to get a valuable formula which is mine by rights, in case you don't know it—"
"That's a lie!" snarled Bain. "You stole it from me—Yuen Kiang gave it to me before he got blown up in that experiment in his laboratory—"
"Hold on," I ordered, slightly dizzy, "lemme get this straight—"
"Aw, it's too mixed up," growled Bill. "Let's take the gal back where we got her, and bust Ace on the snoot."
"Shut up, Bill," I commanded. "Leave this to me—this here's a matter which requires brains. I gotta get this straight. This girl ain't Bain's brother—I mean, he ain't her sister. Well, they ain't no kin. She's got a formula—whatever that is—and he wants it. Say, was you hidin' at Yut Lao's, instead of him havin' you kidnapped?"
"Wonderful," she sneered. "Right, Sherlock!"
"Well," I said, "we been gypped into doin' a kidnappin' when we thought we was rescuin' her; that's why she fit so hard. But why did Ace pick us?"
"I'll tell you, you flat-headed gorilla!" howled Big Bess. "It was to get even with you for that poke on the nose. And what you goin' to do about it, hey?"
"I'll tell you what we're goin' to do!" I roared. "We don't want your dirty dough! You're all a gang of thieves! This girl may be a crook, too, but we're goin' to take her back to Yut Lao's! An' right off."
Catherine caught her breath and whirled on us.
"Do you mean that?" she cried.
"You bet," I said angrily. "We may look like gorillas but we're gents. They gypped us, but they ain't goin' to harm you none, kid."
"But it's my formula," snarled John Bain. "She stole it from me."
"I don't care what she stole!" I roared. "She's better'n you, if she stole the harbor buoys! Get away from that door! We're leavin'!"
The rest was kind of like a explosion—happened so quick you didn't have much time to think. Bain snatched up a shotgun from somewhere but before he could bring it down I kicked it outa his hands and closed with him. I heard Bill's yelp of joy as he lit into Ace, and Catherine and Big Bess went together like a couple of wildcats.
Bain was all wire and spring-steel. He butted me in the face and started the claret in streams from my nose, he gouged at my eye and he drove his knee into my belly all before I could get started. But I finally lifted him bodily and slammed him head-first onto the floor, though, and that finished Mr. John Bain for the evening. He kind of spread out and didn't even twitch.